Earlier I announced I would write 4 more posts about the Quake Live Nations Cup. Here’s the first one in those series in which I will discuss all the group 1 teams, combined with interviews of nearly all the captains. Later on I will do 3 more posts about other groups in the Quake Live Nations Cup.

We have entered week 2 of the Nationscup and some matches have already been played. You could say this preview comes a bit slow, but better late than never! The actual end of the group fase should only be in March anyway. 🙂

Let’s first take a look at which players each country in group 1 has in their lineups.

Team Netherlands

To form a team [netherlands] draven had little problem getting people excited. He’s glad to see that the Dutch Quake Community is becoming more active again since the start of the Quake Live beta, with both new blood and old schools giving the game a try.

[netherlands] Draven: I am in both Q3tdm and QLive captain, in Q3 it was harder to find players for the nation teams, cause there not that many Dutch q3tdmers. In QL it’s easier because many Dutch players started to play and come back from having quite Quake 3. We have a mix of old school players and new schools.

The Dutch lineup consists of both old school talents such as Maddog, Xhep and Weird, but also relatively new blood like Silencep. Other talent, such as tua and Blad3, were recruited from the Dutch Capture The Flag division. They are probably a bit less experienced in TDM, yet still a strong addition to the Dutch lineup.

Although the Dutch team does not have an all star lineup like back in the day with the likes of Lucky, Shaft, if22, SICK, etc… they do have a very solid team that has plentiful previous experience playing together in Nation cups. In my opinion the Dutch team is a serious contender to reach at least the semi-finals.

[netherlands] Draven: I think we can beat every team in our group, though you can never underestimate Poland and Czech cause they have loads of Quake players unlike us , also Stermy and co look strong and have been practicing here and there.

On a side note, just recently [serbia] zeroQL from Han-Sai Production made a frag compilation video about the dutch TDM’er Silencep, called fragged by Silencep. Definitely worth the watch.

Team Poland A

Quake seems to be very popular in Poland these days. Unlike most nations, Poland put up two teams for competition. There’s the Poland B team with Mad as the captain and a Poland A team where Nergal takes the lead.

Even so, according to Nergal, most people in the Polish quake community are still mainly focused on Quake 3 instead of Quake Live:

[poland] Nergal: In Poland quake live is pretty popular, community is forming up quite well. About Polish quake 3 players, actually in Poland the “Polish division” league is about to start, so I think the Polish quake 3 players transfer to Quake Live will be a bit delayed 🙂

About Poland’s A’s chances in group 1… Poland A will probably do good against the Czech Team. Against the Italians and the Dutch however, the odds of winning are estimated to be far less optimistic.

[poland] Nergal: In my opinion our group is a really hard one. Italy and Netherlands are really strong teams. The game vs Czech Republic should be a bit easier though. To be honest I cannot understand the actual seedings. In the 2nd group there is one really strong team and three weaker, comparing to our group it seems to be noticeably easier. After 2nd ballot administrators manipulated with seedings, if it comes to that all ballot had to be repeated. What gives some teams the privilege of being favoured?

Nonetheless, team Poland A seems to have a strong lineup. Italy and the Netherlands should not underestimate this team or they will be in for a surprise.

Team Czech Quake

The Czech Republic Quake community currently has some of the best European Team Death Match players out there. From the Total Annihilation team several names such as Krysa, Smasher and Legie come to mind.

Unfortunately, almost none of these players decided to take part in the Quake Live Nations Cup. Team Annihilation who played the finals of the 2008 Quake 3 Nations Cup against Sweden decided to sit this one out and let other Czech players come up with a mix team.

From the current Czech Quake Live lineup especially dloob is a force to be reckoned with. The other players however are not really considered as a huge thread. The Czech Quake community has definitely not put up their strongest lineup for this competition and I expect them to be playing for nothing more but the fun of it.

These predictions were only confirmed last week when the first week matches of Group 1 were played. Team Czech Quake lost against Italy with scores that speak for themselves:

Map 1 (dm6): 54:135 (Italy wins)

Map 2 (dm6): 47:173 (Italy wins)

But this is not such a bad thing really. Hawr1x, the Quake Live Nations Cup organizer could use an early knockout. He’ll be way too busy shout casting and covering all the other games already! 🙂

Team Italy

In Italy it was Stermy who took up his role as a captain. Until recently Stermy was mainly focused on Fifa, appearing several times even on Eurosport for the Championship Gaming Series.

Luckily Stermy came to his senses just in time to make his comeback to Quake and represent team Italy with pride, in the first ever Quake Live Nations Cup.

To form a strong Italian team for the Quake Live Nations Cup Stermy went looking for both old friends and new talent:

[italy] Stermy: I have been playing QuakeLive somewhat regularly since November, and I saw a lot of Italian players playing from time to time, some new upcoming gamers and also some old friends. (…)

I decided to call Polter and Booms because they stopped playing just a few years ago and I was sure they would have loved to get some competition going once again. At the end of the day they have a good amount of experience behind them, so if I wanted to get a competing team I needed those players in the team. Then I called a lot of young talented gamers such as exp, Manuxz and Spartaz0rd. They have been really active lately in the QuakeLive scene and Quake3 (exp), and I thought they definitely deserved a good spot in the team.

It’s not all about who plays, but also to give younger players some kind of motivation to keep playing and get better, something I had once I started playing Quake3. One day they will be playing these cups instead of us and at the moment the Quake/FPS scene in Italy is not growing so well.

The team Stermy finally came up with is nothing short of a strong unit. Nearly every single name in the lineup is a force on his own and I personally see this team going very far in the tournament.

But Stermy stays rather modest about Italy’s chances and recognizes they’ll have to battle for nearly every point, even in the group fase:

[italy] Stermy: Man, I would love to say I hope to score easy points against every team but we both know that is not possible. I think a lot of the players now have enough experience to compete at a decent level. Also I haven’t competed in Quake3 for a long time, but in Quake Live it seems like almost anyone can hit +50% rail and +35% shaft nowadays, so things are getting a bit more difficult for everybody. You add a 15 second weapon respawn time, and you will have a really tough time any time of the match no matter what. (…) I haven’t been following the TDM scene in Quake 3 for some time and I know a lot of players just switched to QL so we can`t underestimate any opponent.

I would again like to thank all captains for answering my questions. For an overview of the other 3 groups, check back here at holysh1t.net in the next few days. You can subscribe by mail or RSS to receive the news delivered by Google in your mailbox as soon as there’s an update. All the info about the Event can be found on our Quake Live Nations Cup overview page.